The present invention relates to a homogeniser for the continuous treatment of fluids at very high pressure.
Said apparatus, consisting of a plunger pump and of one or more homogenising valves installed in series on the delivery manifold, is applied in sectors such as the food, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and chemical industries and is used more generally for cell breakage treatment of fluids, that is to say for biological products such as vaccines, therapeutic substances and enzymatic and diagnostic preparations.
The objective of all cell breakage techniques, using predetermined apparatuses and/or chemical substances, is to achieve productive cell disaggregation, that is to say which destroys any polluting cells, and at the same time is able to liberate any subcellular substances useful for subsequent production processes.
The use of a high pressure homogeniser, which is normal in mechanical cell breakage techniques, takes advantage of the forced passage from a high pressure zone to a low pressure zone, causing said controlled cellular disaggregation of the fluid treated, using an adjustable valve, commonly known as a homogenising valve, applied on the plunger pump delivery side to generate the pressure required.
PR99A000045 by the same Applicant describes a pump for the treatment of fluids at high pressure comprising a reciprocating plunger in a compression chamber from a fluid intake position to a fluid delivery position; a block for each plunger, connecting the pumping chamber to the intake and delivery valves housed in lateral containers fixed to the block. Each block comprises two half-parts or plates clamped together and having internal grooves to house an internal manifold which connects the pumping chamber and the intake and delivery valves.
The prior art comprises various different types of pumps and therefore homogenisers able to operate at pressures which range from around 500 bar to a maximum of 1500 bar. Studies of said apparatuses have focused on a gradual increase in the operating pressure.
Over the years such homogenisers have evolved to provide a continuous increase in the operating pressures, focusing on both the search for a type and configuration of internal pipes eliminating all variations in cross-section, intersection between holes and internal edges, and on the search for special materials characterised by greater resistance to the stresses to which the pipes and in particular their intersections are subjected.
Initial studies allowed the development of increasingly high operating pressures, up to a maximum of 1500 bar, but research on the quality of the materials was abandoned on account of the impact that they would have had on the final cost of the machine, limiting its commercial scope. By means of computational fluid simulations followed by laboratory tests, the Applicant analysed the assembly consisting of the compression chamber, intake pipe and delivery pipe, the pump and the homogenising valve which together form a high pressure homogeniser.
The Applicant's studies and experiments allowed the identification of the geometrical set up and the technical measures to be applied to the type of machine previously described in order to obtain a prototype able to operate at pressure values that are almost tripled.